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When Wizards began to promote their fourth edition, they talked a lot about how the hobby of roleplaying was circling the drain, with the popularity of MMORPGs on the rise, much the way that film and television have turned literature into a “dying art”. D&D 4th even went as far as to adopt MMORPG terminology, such as tanking, and pulling monsters. Fantasy Flight however seemed to go the other direction, taking a que from what they have done best, board games, and incorporated it into a roleplaying game. The trick here was to innovate, not imitate, and it shows in this new edition of the classic game.
Upon opening this massively thick box, (a good 3” thick) you will find 4 books, a pile of dice (D6s, D8s and D10s in several colors with icons instead of numbers) several decks of cards (in mini, standard, and reference sizes) a pad of character sheets, 4 sheets of laminated high quality token, plastic stands and 3 smaller boxes used to store completed characters. All of the game components are very high quality, from high quality dice, to heavy counters with a laminated finish, the 4 books are also full color with a mix of original art, and classic pieces from previous Warhammer RPGs. Now granted this game is far from Cheap (Coming in at a price tag of $100 US!) so it should at least look pretty. Now while singing the praise of the game merely due to it’s pretty looks and chrome, would be foolish so what is under the hood of all those wonderful toys? The answer is something pretty innovative.
Character creation is a very basic point buy focusing heavily on attributes. How heavily, well for 12 of your 20-25 creation points you can max out wealth, skills, talent cards and action cards. Leaving the rest for stats, Which leads me to believe that players will be putting at least ½ of their creation points into stats, or that every Warhammer PC will be wealthy, heavily skilled, and maxed out on tricks. Race and Career can be determined randomly but the option is there for player choice, and with the careers on cards, that the players will continuously use two players cannot play the exact same career at the same time Keep in mind unlike D&D however Careers are far more focused, meaning you could have a party of all fighter types, or all rougish types, Just not all can be troll slayers, or gamblers. Much like in previous editions of Warhammer, you can change careers when you advance, however gone are the career exits freeing you to jump to any career, but making it more costly to say go from a rat catcher to a apprentice sorcerer, than say from apprentice sorcerer to sorcerer. Another nice thing about the card system is with only one copy at the table the GM can divvy them into piles and let the players choose based on what they would need rather than everyone wait for one player to pick all his feats, and then hand it to the next player. A real boon if you have players who waffle for hours over which advantages to buy. Of course again the drawback is you are limited to the cards on hand (unless you want to go out and buy a second copy of the game or they release them separately. Once you have your character getting in to the game is fun and exciting, task resolution is a basic roll x amount of blue dice per statistic, and add yellow dice per each level of skill. The GM can assign purple dice as well to represent challenges (I.E. resistance to your action) and black dice to represent misfortune (I.E. negative situational modifiers) ability cards and action cards may allow players to negate some of these, or add white dice (which are boons in your favor) you may also add boons by spending fortune (more on that later) Players also choose during their turn a stance, Stances represent how you want to tackle a problem, you may go into varying degrees of Conservative (by replacing blue dice for green) or Reckless (by replacing blue dice with red) your career limits how much you may go one way or the other into a conservative or reckless stance. And each stance has its benefits and drawbacks. Furthermore action cards are double sided to reflect either stance, thus making the outcome of a specific maneuver more than “I get a plus 2 to hit”. The Stance system adds an incredible level of complexity to the game, not that it makes the game harder rules wise, but it makes players think a lot more about how to attack a situation. It is one of the biggest improvements in the game. Also besides hit points players can accumulate fatigue, and stress to hinder them as well, meaning that the aspects of combat can be a bit more to take in. Also some actions have limited uses, meaning once they are used you place an amount of tokens on them taking one away at the start of your turn, once they are gone, you may use this action again. Damage in the game is done by a unique card system if it is normal damage one card= one wound, however if you critical you take some cards face up and follow the penalties given on that card until healed. Another cool tool is the use of a party sheet which tracks the party as a whole, players agree on what kind of group they are in an attempt to tie the party together more cohesively. This allows the GM to control what the party experiences by raising or lowering the party tension level, give benefits to the whole party in the form of fortune points (which give bonus white dice, and are similar to bennies, fate points, etc) and allowing players to share a maneuver, This last part if particularly cool as it allows players to benefit from other players skills in a unique way, another great reinforcement for maybe not all playing the same type of character, but benefiting by diversity. One odd side note for a game with so much in the way of visual aids, and chrome, and one that is based on a popular miniatures game the game is unusually not minis friendly. It uses stand ups which can represent stance, and an abstract movement/ tactical system. While obviously yes no one is stopping you from buying Warhammer or D&D minis and using them in game, it is less intent on it than most RPGs, certainly less intent on it that D&D 3.5 or D&D 4.0.
After talking up the game quite a bit I would be remiss if I did not mention the drawbacks the game does have. First and foremost is the cost, and the limitation of 3 players and a GM. Now the cost as I said is high but understandable, considering what’s all in the box. As for the 3 player limit that is basically due to the amount of stuff required to make it available to more players. Such as more cards, more dice and a few more options. Right now it would mean buying 2 core sets to facilitate 6 players, which when compared to D&D you can support 8 or more if the GM is inclined for about $100 (but not covering cost of dice, minis, or power cards all sold separately) However there are expansions, most of which seem reasonably priced and include additional dice sets meaning that this issue will hopefully be rectified soon enough, Another big hurdle is the lack of an index, as of this writing FFG does have a living index on their website which will be a godsend to players trying to remember where they read that one rule over 4 books.
In this review I did skip mentioning the world of Warhammer, which is a pretty standard dark fantasy Tolkien meets Germanic dark ages kind of world with a dose of black humor. While the Warhammer world is important, It is also Iconic enough that I felt it wasn’t too necessary to cover. Much like D&D or Star Wars it’s been around long enough that most gamers have a basic idea, and while they may not know say what Sigmar is or a Fimir, it’s much like the D&D player who may not know what a Tiefling is. It may be important to your campaign, but it will not shake the fundamental grasp of the world. Having said that the Warhammer world is intact in all its low fantasy glory. Chaos cults, greenskins, woodelves and all, the world did not radically change in this game, nor did FFG try to adjust the world to change the player’s view of it. (such as say setting it after some major earthshattering event in the old world, or adding or removing from the world as it is.
While this edition of the game is still in its infancy, and much like D&D4, has it’s share of detractors waiting to cry foul every time someone speaks well of it Warhammer is still the same basic premise, with a fresh coat of paint. And while Warhammer RPG has always seemed to be one of many imitators to the throne held by D&D, Fantasy Flight took a chance on innovation rather than imitation on this edition which I think will pay off in the end. It is now a greater joy to bring new players in, and sets the GM up with almost every tool he needs in advance to adventure in the old world. So grab your father’s axe, and follow us, for tonight we hunt Orcs!
